


From the Presence of the Sun

by Violsva



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare
Genre: (sometimes), Consensual Infidelity, Fairies, Infidelity, Multi, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 22:38:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2790251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violsva/pseuds/Violsva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They ring the world, and decide their politics and goals behind the lesser shorter lives of men, and interfere when it suits them, and laugh at rules, and make their own; and every act of theirs is known by its reflection in the lives of those they scorn and taunt and swive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Presence of the Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kitsunealyc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunealyc/gifts).



Heading ever westwards, they have a hundred forests to spend the local night in. The morning will not drive them away, but before high noon they must find some darker place, and so they travel, as a single court, or two, or in small bands, depending on the terms and alliances of the moment.

Some places are known as theirs, and the locals avoid them or leave offerings; some have legends remaining but are well-frequented; some places they visit no more than once a year. Some places have their own spirits. There is an island whose Queen is hostile to them, though she will speak with some of Titania’s servants.

But the world is open to them, and the Fairy Court follows the sunset, sleeping where they will and carousing when they can, and Puck leads the revels and reminds the mortals they pass whose land the entire world could be, should they choose.

*

In Scythia the women love their horses more than they do men, and some will go for months without ever seeing a man’s footprints. Watching one of these bands one morning, Puck saw their young Queen riding, with tanned skin and white-blonde braids and dark eyes narrowed against the wind, and looked to his King beside him, and sighed, and determined to be his entertaining best, that between he and Titania Oberon might stay distracted.

Hippolyta was wiser than the run of mortals, and as she walked the rounds of her camp the next night, speaking quietly to her sentries, she often looked behind her. When newly-stitched leather broke the next morning, and milk curdled in its flasks, Puck saw her frown, and to his surprise he kept her tack and breakfast unmolested.

A night later Oberon steered their revels to Scythia, and Puck wished he were surprised. His King was predictable, and all he could do tonight was keep him busy.

He was surprised, however, when Hippolyta walked out alone, past the circles of her people’s campfires and into the bare steppe. Oberon had not called her; this was by her choice.

She halted just out of earshot of the camp, and stood for a long moment staring into the darkness. A fairy drifted past her in a gust of wind, and tied her braids in knots. She whirled around, and clearly caught sight of it.

She was so close, and prepared for anything. Most mortals did not expect them and therefore did not see them; Hippolyta must have heard stories of them, and unexpectedly given them credit. Perhaps she had a drop of fairy blood somewhere. For her, ready and waiting for them, the noises of the court ahead might be audible, and their movements just on the edge of her vision.

She intended to speak boldly, but she could not quite believe in the reality of her visions. She started shouting, but her voice weakened as she went on. “What are you, that stalk my camp by nights?”

Oberon would have stepped forward, but a fairy flew past his face in an explosion of pixie dust, and he backed away instead. Puck threw a gust of wind around Hippolyta, and she spun with it until she staggered, dizzily, facing back towards her camp. Titania appeared, and grabbed Oberon by his antler and dragged him away. Puck flicked a will o’ the wisp in front of Hippolyta and it wandered in the direction of the Amazon camp, and she hesitantly followed after it. She kept wanting to look behind her, kept trying to escape its pull, but it managed to hold her until fading out just before she reached the edge of the torchlight. She sent a last, frowning look into the darkness, but could have seen nothing clearly.

Oberon was subdued for weeks. Hippolyta and her Amazons went to fight wars in Asia Minor, the Queen still suspicious and always prepared for fights, and the Fairy Court rested in Scythia less often after that, and saw fewer riders when they did, and more of the empty yellow plains.

*

Puck deliberately pays little attention to his rulers’ fights. His primary loyalty is known to everyone, and unchangeable; he does not need to know the balance of power between them. He performs Oberon’s commands, for he is Oberon’s left hand. But he prefers, sometimes, to be ignorant of the details of why, unless Oberon decides he wants an audience.

Still he perforce must know more about them than the rest of the court, and he would not be who he is if he could keep silent comfortably.

*

They came upon her off the coast of India, as they sat on a promontory of Andaman. Her dark brown skin glittered with water droplets, until at her waist it grew scales that glittered on their own. She clutched a dolphin’s dorsal fin, as a storm rose up and shook the sea. It could not harm her; as the dolphin leapt above and below the waves she held on firmly, and presently she began to sing.

She was not a Siren, or even Puck might have been tempted to leap in after her, spirit though he was; but she was a sister to the Sirens, a kinder one. She sang and the air hummed with her song, the seabirds stopped their cawing and the land creatures paused. The dolphin under her almost paused as well, until she laughed after a stanza and tickled it to make it leap again. The waves at the shore ceased crashing slowly, letting her voice sound out clearer and clearer. And back from the shore the calm travelled, until the storm turned in its path and flew away from her, revealing the sky, beginning to lighten with morning, behind. The stars came out from where they had been hidden, and the sea-maid kept singing.

Her song persisted as the sky lightened and lightened, and the stars remained as bright as ever, not willing to fade away from her music. As at last the sun began to rise, some of them ceded their places, but others, caught entirely in her music, fell to earth to hear it still, where they scorched the land and glittered on the ocean’s shore like the water-droplets in her hair.

But Oberon looked not at the mermaid nor the stars, but beyond them somewhere. “Ha,” he said, and his eyes followed a path through the air, the movement of something Puck could not see. At last he stared toward the western horizon, smiling to himself.

*

Oberon ignores with grand tolerance the nights Titania spends dancing with her fairies and votaries, and Titania treats him the same when she sees him with Puck. But she likes the hobgoblin himself. Puck has the freedom of a fairy and a servitor and a man, and moreover one who has been following them for centuries. He is between them sometimes, perhaps, but he is permitted to be.

Titania finds labours suited to him, and laughs at his japes, and she, like Oberon, unlike the rest of the court, understands his nature. He is neither orderly, like most of the sprites of their court, nor wild like those they exclude. He is the wildness that must be part of order, or it dies. Titania makes use of him for that, and forgives it when his mischief interferes with her. It is who he is, and the duty he is called to.

*

Titania did not lie with Theseus, Puck knew that. But after the mortal slew Sinis it was she who whispered stories of terror into Peregenia’s ears, and hid her in a bank of rushes so well he could not find her. And Puck saw himself her rage when Peregenia revealed herself, though she tried to hide it. He talked the court away from Greece, then, and they spent most of those nights in Ethiopia or Scandinavia.

He hoped that Theseus would find some permanent union (he would not die young; he had the mark of heroism on him), but the news they heard while passing through Greece was not promising, and he tried to steer them away from Athens every time.

And so they landed on Naxos for an evening, as a ship appeared on the horizon. They danced with the Maenads for a while, and no one noticed Titania slip away.

Puck realized she was gone, however, and followed her to the shoreline. He found Ariadne in an unwaking sleep behind a boulder, and passed her to where Titania’s fingers were tracing over Theseus’ forehead.

The pebbles under her foot slipped sideways, and she pitched forward over the prince and caught herself on one hand. Whatever spell she’d cast – likely to make him forget Ariadne – was only half-finished, and would dissipate in time.

Titania had made no sound perceptible to mortals, and none of the sailors woke. She stood upright again, tall and elegant in her white draperies, and glared in all directions. Puck joined the mortal girl behind the boulder, doubting it would make a difference. Titania knew he was there.

She strode past him back to the forest, not looking to the side. But when he turned to follow her at a safe distance her voice caught in his ears: _Tell my lord he has no business complaining, after all his nonsense._

“I’ll tell him no such thing,” Puck muttered; but it was fair enough. They’d passed through Scythia again the night before. With these two, their centuries together had bred both forgiveness and contempt for each other’s failings, and they could likely no longer live any other way.

*

Now, at the very antipodes of Naxos, Puck closes his hand around Oberon’s arm, and persuades him to forget it for a while. Titania is walking with the dreams of some favoured mortal, and they have this gilgai, this late hour, to themselves. With Puck, this is no insult to the Queen.

The grass is always soft for them. Oberon, once his attention is drawn, holds Puck down and plunders his mouth, and Puck relaxes his guard, his magic, the drifting minor chaos in the air around him. It has been so long since he could relax.

His King takes his mouth until both of them are gasping, then licks his neck and collarbones. Puck reaches up to drag his fingers along the lines of Oberon’s antlers and then through his hair.

They have their own invisibility, in the dark night near these few trees. They have near-silence and all the noise they need. They have trust and their untold years of knowledge of each other. At last Oberon presses Puck’s legs together and Puck sighs as his King slides between them, and they move together like fighting waves.

This is not permanence, not reflected in the world around them as Oberon and Titania’s marriage is. But Puck is no more mortal than Oberon, and this is its own form of stability, a stability made up of change.


End file.
